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What’s HOT in Global Warming?
Ethanol, Polar Bears, Dogs & Phytoplankton

Professor Bruce E. Johansen

Raining on the Corn-Ethanol Parade

I hate to rain on the ethanol parade here in the Cornhusker State. The price of corn shot up from $1.90 to $3.75 a bushel between 2006 and 2007 because of the heavy buzz over ethanol, and a large number of farmers are loving the fact that the era of cheap corn has ended. In his 2007 State of the Union message, President George W. Bush vowed to reduce the United States’ consumption of imported oil, calling for a five-fold, government-mandated increase in ethanol and other renewable fuels as matter of “energy security.”

Corn-derived ethanol is not such a good idea environmentally, however. Sugar cane is better. Brazil has been presented as a first-class example of ethanol in action. That country uses sugar cane, a much more powerful source of ethanol than corn. Researchers at the University of Minnesota have estimated that converting the entire U.S. corn crop to ethanol would replace only one-eighth of U.S. gasoline consumption, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote in January (“The Sum of All Ears,” 1/29/07). In addition, corn must be grown and transported, after which ethanol must be manufactured. Replacing a gallon of gasoline with a gallon of ethanol does not save a gallon of gasoline because most of the energy that goes into corn comes from fossil fuels. The real savings, Krugman noted, is more like a quarter of a gallon — so make that a 3 per cent savings in gasoline consumption for the entire U.S. corn crop.

But then, what would we eat? The rising price of corn is already raising the price or tortillas out of the poor’s reach in Mexico.

Bush Sides with the Polar Bears — Under Duress

The Bush Administration has decided to propose listing the polar bear as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, placing the U.S. government on record as saying that global warming could drive one of the world’s most recognizable animals out of existence. The Bush people didn’t do this because they wanted to, of course. Pesky environmental lawyers forced its hand.

The administration’s proposal stems from the fact that rising temperatures in the Arctic are shrinking the sea ice that polar bears need for hunting.

According to Juliet Eilperin, writing in the Washington Post (“U.S. Wants Polar Bears Listed as Threatened,” 12/ 27/06), “Identifying polar bears as threatened with extinction could have an enormous political and practical impact. As the world’s largest bear and as an object of children’s affection as well as Christmastime Coca-Cola commercials, the polar bear occupies an important place in the American psyche. Because scientists have concluded that carbon dioxide from power-plant and vehicle emissions is helping drive climate change worldwide, putting polar bears on the endangered species list raises the legal question of whether the government would be required to compel U.S. industries to curb their carbon dioxide output.”

Ice in Canada’s western Hudson Bay now breaks up two-and-a-half weeks earlier than it did 30 years ago, giving polar bears there less time to hunt and build up fat reserves that sustain them for eight months before hunting resumes. As local polar bears have become thinner, female polar bears’ reproductive rates and cubs’ survival rates have fallen, spurring a 21 percent population drop from 1997 to 2004.

Phytoplankton Biomass Depleted by Warming

The media missed this one… But, gosh, how newsworthy is half the photosynthesis on Earth when Britney Spears is shaving her head? Phytoplankton may seem rather prosaic until one realizes that they are at the base of the oceanic food chain.

Warmer ocean surface temperatures correspond to lower oceanic phytoplankton biomass and productivity, the source of half the photosynthesis (“net primary production”) on Earth (and the base of the oceanic food chain), according to a survey of nearly a decade’s worth of satellite data compiled by Michael J. Behrenfeld and colleagues in the December 7, 2006 issue of Nature (“Climate-driven Trends in Contemporary Ocean Productivity”). The scientists argue that this is a result of changes induced by warming in ocean circulation that reduce supplies of nutrients required for photosynthesis. Many of these nutrients are conducted through the ocean by upwelling of cold, nutrient-rich water. The mass of phytoplankton can vary by 100 times in various parts of the ocean, depending on local conditions, including the degree of mixing and deposit of wind-borne iron from the continents. Ocean mixing is inhibited by warming water. Satellites have made possible surveys of plankton biomass over large areas of the world ocean. The amount of plankton biomass is also sensitive to the El Nino/La Nina cycle, decreasing as waters warm, and increasing as they cool.

“Extrapolating the satellite observations into the future suggests that marine biological productivity in the tropics and mid-latitudes will decline substantially, in agreement with climate-model simulations” (Scott C. Doney, “Plankton in a Warmer World,” Nature, 12/7/06). Productivity probably will increase at higher latitudes.

Another Reason to Love Dogs

A generation ago, the Inuit used dogs to travel over sea ice. Now they use snowmobiles, which are faster and more convenient, but don’t sense thin ice like dogs do, according to Barry Smit, a University of Guelph researcher and the Canada Research Chair in Global Environmental Change. “As ice becomes more unpredictable with climate change, this is becoming a serious problem. Degradation of the permafrost is affecting travel on the land and the stability of some structures,” Smit told the Environment News Service (“Eminent Scientists Warn of Disastrous, Permanent Global Warming,” 2/19/07). Smit travels to Inuit communities such as Arctic Bay, at the north end of Baffin Island, to study how the Inuit are adapting to climate change.

Note: My publisher, Praeger, has asked me to write a new book on personal solutions to global warming. Toward this end, I’m asking readers to send me descriptions of what they are doing in their daily lives to impede global warming: bjohansen@mail.unomaha.edu.

Frederick W. Kayser Professor of Communication at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, Johansen is the author of the three-volume “Global Warming in the Twenty-First Century” (Praeger, 2006).